Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiderwalk
I watched Rogue One yesterday, and to be perfectly honest I was bored for most of it's duration. The characters and plot were mediocre at best, and despite it looking very pretty, I didn't find it engaging on any level. It did pick up a bit in the last act, and the space battle was quite spectacular, but like so many films that have come before spectacle doesn't always equate to a good movie.
The other thing that really bothered me was the [Show spoiler]CGI Tarkin and Leia. Tarkin was almost passable, but his voice wasn't remotely like Peter Cushing's, and Leia was totally ridiculous - what the hell were they thinking!. 
Despite it's flaws, The Force Awakens is a much better film IMO. |
I saw Rogue One last night, and have to agree with this, I'm sad to say.
Whilst I can completely see what they were trying to do with this one, it ultimately feels unfocused. When it does start to feel more confident, it immediately seems to reset that sentiment by cutting to something else. I dunno if that was pressure from the producers to make a 'tighter' film, but to me it screams impatience.
It tried to keep going at a pace it didn't need to. If it wanted to be an old school war movie, it should've stuck to that and let most scenes play out and breathe a bit until it got to the action. After all, Gareth Edwards' first two films both seemed to recognise this, and the most memorable moments of both Monsters and Godzilla were when it was being patient, observant and visually intuitive. Here Edwards occasionally manages some of those things, but almost by accident and only for a split-second, throwing the moment away with a cut to something else.
Whilst I admit I can't fault the technical filmmaking, the choice to include
[Show spoiler]CGI Peter Cushing
was an extremely dubious one -
[Show spoiler]whilst I could buy seeing Darth Vader, there was little need to explicitly show Grand Moff Tarkin in any other capacity than a hologram. Vader could have been the enforcer of Tarkin's orders (via The Emperor) if they really needed Krennic to be a subordinate to someone (they could've given him a different angle if they needed to). A simple solution is to have someone under Tarkin played by another British character actor - someone like Peter Capaldi would do the job perfectly.
However, the very end shot of
[Show spoiler]CGI Carrie Fisher
was the most unforgivable - and as someone else already said (in as many words), almost made me forgive them for the above. I can entirely see why it was done for the purposes of plot, but it did not feel right in a practical sense. In fact,
[Show spoiler]Darth Vader's appearance near the end should have been the final scene (that sequence was breathless, and excellent whilst it lasted).
This is where you can feel the presence of a 'committee' encroaching on the creative direction of a film like this. Writers and producers insisting on
[Show spoiler]the appearance of familiar faces to such an extent that they think a CGI cameo is a good way to resurrect them, when it's not. Did they not learn from Snoke's appearance in The Force Awakens? Apparently not.
Well unfortunately, to me those decisions felt both patronising and foolhardy, and ultimately marred my enjoyment of the film. As an idea it worked, but you can't have it both ways -
[Show spoiler]why not cast someone else as the same character, as they did with Mon Mothma for example? It's not impossible, and in fact far more forgivable.
On paper this has possibly the best cast of any Star Wars film, but most of my favourite actors were given such little weight to their characters - not to mention a lack of chemistry as a group, and very little for some actors to work with (especially Luna, Ahmed, Mikkelsen, Jiang...even Mendelsohn to some extent). I was also quite frustrated at the way they
[Show spoiler]killed off Whitaker's Saw Garrera
who was definitely a character that had more charisma than most others (much like Donnie Yen and Alan Tudyk's characters, who seemed to connect with the audience more than most).
So whilst the film looks great (apart from the points I mentioned), and I can't fault the performances, the script is the main problem with this one - though Felicity Jones isn't a particularly powerful actor in my opinion, so was a troublesome lead too. I can't help but feel they should've gone even smaller than they did, as this currently feels like half a Star Wars pretending to be a whole one. I actually found myself enjoying the dogfights more than the human-based drama, which isn't great when your heart is supposed to be with the people on the ground.
If you wanted to really be brave, you could've made this a full-on claustrophobic ground war, with very little actual space battles (or even a lack of vista shots). Platoon in space, if you will. Instead, we have all the thematic elements drifting back towards the original framework, but not quite making it there - despite the whole thing looking like something new and different and slightly unfamiliar. I was hoping for even more of a departure than it actually was.
I didn't hate it, but as you can tell I was at least a little disappointed. I think it may improve on a second viewing, but it's evident Abrams had a far better handle on this than Edwards - and I'm pretty certain Rian Johnson will too, but I'm still a little worried about Colin Trevorrow (after seeing what he did to the JP franchise). Lord and Miller may impress me more with their Anthology film in 2018 - I've enjoyed their comedies to date, and Alden Ehrenreich was excellent in Hail, Caesar! and should do a good job as a young Han Solo.